MCLC: desperate plight of Uighurs

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: pjmooney <pjmooney at me.com>
Subject: desperate plight of Uighurs
***********************************************************

Source: Sydney Morning Herald (3/1/14):
http://www.smh.com.au/world/losing-their-religion-desperate-plight-of-china
s-ethnic-uighurs-20140228-33r1j.html

Losing their religion: Desperate plight of China's ethnic Uighurs
By Philip Wen, Sanghee Liu

The symbolic heart of power in China, Tiananmen Square, is among the most
tightly controlled areas in Beijing. But on October 28 last year, shortly
after noon, the constant police presence and surveillance was undone by a
rudimentary plot.

A four-wheel-drive with number plates registered in the far western region
of Xinjiang veered onto the footpath alongside Chang'an Avenue, the
capital's main east-to-west thoroughfare. Ploughing into pedestrians at
speed, it travelled more than 400 metres before crashing to a halt and
bursting into flames, killing all three occupants under the serene gaze of
the square's portrait of Chairman Mao.

Two tourists were killed and 40 injured in the most prominent act of
protest at the square since the student demonstrations of June 4, 1989.

The square was evacuated, armed police swarmed for days and internet
censors moved to delete photos and discussion of the incident on social
media.

After more than a day of silence, the occupants of the car were identified
by police as Usmen Hasan, his wife, Gulkiz Gini, and his mother, Kuwanhan
Reyim.

The names were identifiably Uighur, a Turkic-speaking Muslim ethnic
minority from Xinjiang, as were those of five other people arrested in
connection with the attack.

Police said they had retrieved petrol canisters, knives, metal bars and a
black banner bearing "religious extremist messages" in the burnt-out
car, and officials declared the incident a "violent terrorist act that
was carefully planned and organised" by the East Turkestan Islamic
Movement, an obscure group whose ability to strike in China has been
questioned by analysts.

The Chinese government has invariably portrayed any resistance to its
policies in Xinjiang as acts of separatism; and violent clashes between
Uighurs and police as terrorism motivated by Islamist extremists with
foreign support.

But Uighur advocates of self-determination insist the government's
aggressive security policies and restrictions on religion have provoked
violence by despairing Uighurs, often armed only with primitive weapons
such as knives and petrol bombs.

More than 100 people have been reported killed in more than a dozen
violent incidents in the region in the past year alone.
In the latest incident, on February 14, police shot dead eight Uighurs in
Uqturpan, in Aksu prefecture, after what state media described as an
attack on police by assailants armed with bombs made from gas cylinders.

Experts pinpoint July 5, 2009, as a turning point in the struggle between
Uighurs and the government. At least 197 people died in Xinjiang's capital
Urumqi after Uighur men attacked majority Han Chinese people in a series
of street riots. But the Tiananmen Square attack could prove an even more
serious watershed.

Does it set a precedent for future campaigns by Uighurs? Or has such a
visible act committed in a politically sensitive place guaranteed an even
harsher crackdown?

It is in the villages deep in southern Xinjiang where the greatest anguish
resides, largely hidden from public view.

While foreign reporters are ostensibly free to travel within Xinjiang,
detection invariably means a lengthy police interview under the pretext of
"national security".

And even with a network of surveillance cameras trained on mosques, public
areas and some residential streets, people say the government also employs
informants - locals paid to spy on their own.

It means those that leave, like Yusuf*, a student at a major university in
Beijing, feel uneasy whenever they are back home.

Yusuf, 23, who hails from a village on the outskirts of Karakash, near
Hotan, says despite government pressure, conservative Islamic thought has
been resurgent in southern Xinjiang, especially in Hotan, considered the
most traditional of major Uighur cities. "I just think, logically, if you
squeeze something really tight, it will repel," he says.

Yusuf says his friends get angry at the tightening pressures on religious
freedom, "but they don't dare to speak out".

One outlet used is WeChat, a mobile messaging and social media
application, where information can spread quickly through group messages
and popular Uighur-language blogs.

News of the January arrest of high-profile Uighur rights advocate Ilham
Tohti spread like wildfire and stirred emotions. He was charged this week
with crimes relating to separatism.

"They call him Ilham aka, it's like brother," Yusuf says. "He's the
greatest person I've ever met, because he dares to speak the truth."

One of the fundamental sources of tension in Xinjiang is the mismatch
between what the government and Uighurs understand by religious freedom.
The Chinese government insists that it does not impede religious practice
in the region, in line with the constitution. But the government mandates
that ''normal religious activity'' can take place only within
government-sanctioned organisations and places of worship. Muslims
worshipping independently risk being detained. Women are told to remove
headscarves in public.

Pilgrimages to Mecca are illegal if not made on government-organised trips
which, while subsidised by the state, have small annual quotas which are
swiftly filled. Religious instruction is forbidden outside approved
government institutions, mainly in Urumqi.

Some are taking things in their own hands. In Hotan, Nabir*, a security
guard in his 30s, slinks into the back of our car. He wants to see my
passport and press credentials, worried I work for the government.

Nabir has sent his eight-year-old son for religious training at a kanunciz
orun - literally, an "illegal place". It is a practice so fraught and
secretive he doesn't even know where his son is, and hasn't seen him since
he sent him away three months ago. "If police find out about them, the
teachers will be in jail forever, or shot dead on the spot," he says.

For Tursungul Turdi, the deepest hurt is in not knowing. Her son, Eysajan
Memet, has been missing since being detained in the Urumqi riots in 2009.

Despite repeated pleas for information, authorities have told her nothing
- not where he is, what he has done, or even whether he is still alive.

"If he really did something bad, fine, they can kill him," Tursungul, 72,
says in her bare-walled house in a Uighur quarter of Kashgar.

"But if he did nothing, why is he still detained? Why don't they just tell
the truth?"

Eysajan, a 25-year-old cook and musician when he disappeared, is one of at
least 40 ethnic Uighurs unaccounted for after the 2009 riots. Family
members are instructed to stop looking for their missing loved ones; those
that don't comply are monitored, harassed and threatened.

State media reports on the violence in Xinjiang have taken on almost a
template format, with references to "organised and premeditated" terrorist
attacks, with the assailants often watching "videos from overseas showing
terrorist acts".

"[The reports] are completely unreliable. They're incoherent, and on
specific incidents they often contradict themselves," says Nicholas
Bequelin, a Xinjiang researcher at Human Rights Watch. "There's great
variance with what people can observe on the ground."

In Karakash, locals say police opened fire on a crowd, including children,
that had gathered to protest after three Uighur men were shot after
insisting they perform Friday prayers at their local mosque, rather than
the one regulated by authorities.

And in Jigdejay, locals say religious students had gathered from nearby
towns and hid in the desert simply to undertake forbidden study of the
Koran, but were shot dead by police, even though they were unarmed.

Willingness to believe local versions of events passed on by word of mouth
highlights the level of distrust and antagonism in the region. But there
is plenty of paranoia on the other side.

In Urumqi, we are detained and questioned by police keen to ascertain
whether we were part of the ''hostile external forces'' the government
says are trying to split Xinjiang from China.

The state's response to Xinjiang's problems after the Urumqi riots is one
that has served well across the rest of China - breakneck economic growth.

As the Xinjiang government's latest work report is keen to emphasise, GDP
growth in Xinjiang was 11.1 per cent last year, among the best in the
country.

Kashgar, an ancient city on the edge of the Taklamakan Desert, is
geographically closer to Islamabad than Beijing, and at times seems a
world apart from the rest of China. Its 15th-century Id Kah mosque is the
biggest in China.

But the face of Kashgar is changing fast. Designated as a special economic
development zone by the Chinese government in 2010, investment dollars
from Shanghai to Shenzhen have poured in, sprouting five-star hotels,
office blocks and medium-rise residential buildings.

Much of the old town has been torn down, with the government citing safety
concerns in the event of an earthquake. Kashgar's newer areas look just
like the rest of China.

"Before, it was fast assimilation but [now] it is assimilation on
steroids," Bequelin says. "That just creates more tension."

Last month, Yu Zhengsheng, a member of China's seven-man Politburo
Standing Committee, called for stricter management of religious activities
to ensure it did not "spill over into illegal acts".

In an official training video for Communist Party cadres seen by Fairfax
Media, a government religion expert argues there are too many mosques in
the region. "We can't extinguish religion for the moment, we respect the
freedom of religion," Ma Pinyan says.

"But that doesn't necessarily mean faith in religion is good for the
nation's development. My heart breaks when I see gleaming mosques next to
schools which are run-down and dilapidated."

But for the devout Uighurs of Xinjiang, hearts are breaking for a
different reason: they say they are becoming strangers in their own land.

"There's nothing people can do about it but pray to God," Yusuf says.
"Without His will, nothing happens."

* Some names have been changed to protect the identity of those
interviewed.